For Those Countries That Use The English Language. A Question.

I live in South Texas. I don't really think I have a heavy drawl.
I also know a bit of Spanish.
You have to if you want to communicate with a sizeable part of the population.
I've been told "Tu hablas como Tarzan."
I haven't developed the knack for rolling syllables the way they do.
I can read and comprehend the Espanol, but damn, they speak really fast.
Slow it down Jesus.

I think with TV becoming more global, things like youtube and internet radio, we are all picking up bits of each others version of English and using
words we would have never even heard of 10 years ago. It reminds of the language that was used on the streets in the original blade runner movie.
I've also noticed more and more how accents are making there way into music and todays version of rap and the UK's "grime" scene, like an accent makes
that music theres.

I love to sit in busy shopping centres and listen to the accents and foreign languages around me. Thee human voice is a wonderful thing. Especially
Japanese, I have a music collection from their " anime" TV shows. Thee japanese voices are very different to western ones. Not understanding the
language keeps the words as musical instruments.

Pommie accents are wonderful, though few and far between now in western Australia, so too the Australian slang. Rose Tyler, the blind girl from Dr Who
TV show had a wonderful accent, worth watching the show just to listen to here speak.

Blade Runner, a wonderful movie though dark, "yes" the language make the film in in it's own way.

Make of it what you will, it's very unique shall we say.
I completely agree with you, the variation of the human voice just through language without song is amazing, I too love Japanese, and learnt it a long
time ago whilst teaching Aikido but never used the language much, other than watching anime and I've forgot a lot of it, but it does sound amazing.
I enjoyed Billie Piper's "Rose Tyler" and she was good in Penny dreadful as a common Londoner but I loved Jenna Louise Coleman's "Clara" accent, I
like how Dr Who uses accents from around the UK.

I wonder how many British people know that it's we Americans who actually speak the way they USED to speak... probably not many. They didn't change it
to the way it is now until after the Revolutionary War, lol...

a reply to: Gazrok
This is at least partly true, though not the whole truth.
For example, I was puzzled, as a child, when my Devon grandmother called the last letter of the alphabet "zee", instead of the more usual "zed". That
must have been a provincial survival, as in the U.S., of the older pronunciation.

I mean, the split was 200 years ago, so not like anyone around remembers. It's just funny...because all those medieval movies, etc. are all completely
wrong. In those days, would have sounded just like us.

We even standardized spellings, (well, Webster did), for words that always had two accepted forms in England, color or colour, for example. When we
standardized, the stubborn Brits simply took the one Webster didn't like! LOL....

gonna go a little "Sheldon" here, incidentally, the reason for two different forms of spelling...the words came to England from French and Latin
sources, so depending on the source, gave one the spelling a certain way. Both were accepted (until Webster standardized one or the other, for
American English).

a reply to: Gazrok
That's very interesting, but it's about one letter.
Let's take another example. In words like "bath", and "castle", is the American short "a" older or younger then the British long "a"? I don't actually
know the answer on that point.
On the one hand, the short "a" is also used in northern England, which suggests another provincial survival.
On the other hand, Chaucer's "erse" is better echoed in the modern British "arse" than in the American "ass".
That's why I think your thesis may be partly true rather than the whole story.

a reply to: Gazrok
Let's take another aspect of the way we speak. Distribution of emphasis.
I grew up hearing words like "DeFENCE", "PrinCESS", "Robin HOOD", "CaribBEan".
If I hear them on American media, they have becone "DEfense", "PRINcess", "ROBin Hood", "CaRIBbean". The emphasis has been brought forward by a
syllable.
Which of those two modes is more original?

(As a twist on this theme, I've also noticed the reverse. The familiar "GARage" becomes the American "GaRAGE".
My current theory is that this happens because "garage" was a loan-word, and the Americans primly kept the French pronunciation)

I think music is going through one of its phases, we get in-undated by American "pop" music and everybody wants to sound different to the norm so
accents seem to become more prevalent.
The UK listened to American Hip-hop and rap, so things like grime i think grew from people wanting to tell there own stories in music or have a sound
to identify with. It must be the same in other country's like the US and Australia.

I got into anime in my very early teens before i could speak the Japanese language, I bought a "video tape" version of Akira and thought it was
magical. The mix of sound and language is still awesome today.

I like British TV that shows the difference in accents from across these Isles, I sometimes wonder if people in other country's think we all speak
like down trodden cockney Londoners, the Beatles or upper-class snobs!! Beaky Blinders is a good one, showing the west midlands accent!!
20 miles either north or south of Birmingham and the accent is very different.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: Gazrok
Let's take another aspect of the way we speak. Distribution of emphasis.
I grew up hearing words like "DeFENCE", "PrinCESS", "Robin HOOD", "CaribBEan".
If I hear them on American media, they have becone "DEfense", "PRINcess", "ROBin Hood", "CaRIBbean". The emphasis has been brought forward by a
syllable.
Which of those two modes is more original?

(As a twist on this theme, I've also noticed the reverse. The familiar "GARage" becomes the American "GaRAGE".
My current theory is that this happens because "garage" was a loan-word, and the Americans primly kept the French pronunciation)

I agree with you about Americans using some French pronunciations for English words, I think the French would have had them all speaking there
language if they had half the chance. I also agree with your previous post about "Arse"

I know our Adirondack mountain accent derives from the scotch Irish that settled that region.
Pennsylvania is influenced by German and the Midwest by Nordic cultures.
New York accent hints at a Dutch influence. Though the aristocracy in N.Y. used a feigned British like accent through the forties. Just watch any old
movie. Weird...

But then again us kids had Beatle boots and haircuts like Ringo star in the day, then we all turned into hippies and surfies.

Akira was good in it's day, and Battle Angel Alita is about to be released in a live version which looks great in the trailers. Alita was VHS and the
romance was tragedy itself.

Your getting me nostalgic for some of Brit TV shows . . . .

Brit accents are few and far between now in western australia, though maybe I just don't go to the right pubs. A shame in many ways, I went to school
in the Perth northern suburbs and there were pommie girls galore. Some of whom could put on a very unlady like cockney. I didn't appreciate it
then.

That's funny. When I watch makeup videos that are a few women from Australia and New Zealand and another in London and another in Ireland. After
watching them I'm hearing an accent in my head mostly aussy. Ill think head but hear hid. The little Irish lass doesn't know the letter T. She uses
gli..er not glitter and things are lih el instead of little. Oh well she does use t when she says things but then she leaves out the H so it's tings
I love them all!

I wonder how the Aussy accent developed that way. It's different from an english accent but similar.
Do others hear an American accent as a variant of an English accent? I don't hear it. I think the American accent is the least elegant of all of
englishes variations around the world. I think South African is the most elegant. Everyone sounds like royalty there. Aussy is the most casual to my
ear. Everybody (ivry buddy) is chill.
Some English sound elegant and some sound more casual and some ( hello Yorkshire) are well... is it English? LOL. No offense I love the sound. Like
English with bells on or something. I'm not great at describing what I hear. Sorry. But I'm really good at accents if we had a sound feature.

English is like a smoothy. A blend of every language in Europe at the end of the middle ages. I think those of us who's native tongue is English find
it pretty easy to learn the other European languages. We find words we know or are a root for words we know in every language going back to old Roman
Latin.
While the languages of the far east are very hard to learn. We have no common ground.
We have more in common with the Islamic language and their written characters including our numbers.

Just fascinating to me. There's a whole history written within our language.

a reply to: Sillyolme
Missing out the "t" is called the "glottal stop", and it isn't just Ireland. It's a feature expanding out from London. "Woss the ma'er?"
Welsh is always considered a very musical accent.

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